The Prophet of Berkeley Square Part 16

"But I thought Malkiel was a man," cried Lady Enid, looking towards the Prophet.

"He--for I will not foul my lips with the accursed name--is not a man," roared Sir Tiglath. "He is a syndicate. He is a company. He meets together, doubtless, in some low den of the city. He reads reports to himself of the ill-gotten gains accruing from his repeated insults to the heavens round some abominable table covered with green cloth. He quotes the prices of the shares in him, and declares dividends, and carries balances forward, and some day will wind himself up or cast himself anew upon the mercy of the market. Part of him is probably Jew, part South African and part America. The whole of him is thrice accursed."

He began to expand once more, but Mrs. Merillia perceived the tendency and checked it in time.

"Pray, Sir Tiglath," she said almost severely, "don't. With my sprained ankle I am really not equal to it."

Sir Tiglath had enough chivalry to stop, and Lady Enid once again chipped in.

"But, really, I'm almost sure Malkiel is a--"

She caught the Prophet's eye, as Mrs. Merillia had, and paused. He turned to the astronomer.

"But how can a company make itself into a prophet?" he asked.

"Young man, you talk idly! What are companies formed for if not to make profits?" retorted Sir Tiglath. "Every one is a company nowadays. Don't you know that? Murchison, the famous writer of novels, is a company.

Jeremy, the actor-manager, is a company. So is Bynion the quack doctor, and the Rev. Mr. Kinnimer who supplies tracts to the upper cla.s.ses, and Upton the artist, whose pictures make tours like Sarah Bernhardt, and Watkins, whose philosophy sells more than Tupper's, and Caroline Jingo, who writes war poems and patriotic odes. If you were to invite these supposed seven persons to dinner, and all of them came, you would have to lay covers for at least fifty scoundrels. Oh-h-h-h!"

"Well, but how are you sure that--ahem--the _Almanac_ person is also plural, Sir Tiglath?" inquired Mrs. Merillia.

"Because I sought him with the firm intention of a.s.sault and battery for five-and-forty years," returned the astronomer. "And only gave up my Christian quest when I was a.s.sured, on excellent authority, that he was a company, and had originally been formed in the United States for the making of money and the defiance of the heavenly bodies. May bulls and bears destroy him!"

"Well, it's very odd," said Lady Enid. "Very odd indeed."

As she spoke she glanced at the Prophet and met his eyes. There are moments when the mere expression in another person's eyes seems to shout a request at one. The expression in the Prophet's eyes performed this feat at this moment, with such abrupt vehemence, that Lady Enid felt almost deafened. She leaned back in her chair, as if avoiding a missile, and exclaimed,--

"Of course! And I never guessed it!"

"Guessed what, my dear?" inquired Mrs. Merillia.

"Why, that--he--it--was a company," replied Lady Enid.

The Prophet blessed and thanked her with a piercing and saved look.

"Nor I," he a.s.sented, descending into the very mine of subterfuge for his recent oath's sake, "nor I, or I should never have taken the useless trouble that I have taken."

He managed to say this with such conviction that his grandmother, who, in the past, had always found him to be transparently honest and sincere, was carried away by the deception. She wrinkled her long nose, as was her habit when sincerely pleased, and cried gaily,--

"Then, Hennessey, now you've heard Sir Tiglath's opinion of the practice of trying to turn the stars into money-makers, and the planets into old gipsy women who tell fortunes to silly servant girls, I'm sure you'll never study them again. Come, promise me!"

The Prophet made no answer.

"Hennessey," cried his grandmother, with tender pertinacity, "promise me! Sir Tiglath, join your voice to mine!"

Sir Tiglath had become really grave, not theatrically serious.

"Young man," he said, "your revered granddam asks of you a righteous thing. Who are you to trifle with those s.h.i.+ning worlds that make a beauty of the night and that stir eternity in the soul of man? Who are you to glue your pinpoint of a human eye to yonder machine and play with the stupendous Jupiter and Saturn as a child plays with marbles or with peg-tops? Who are you that thinks those glittering monsters have nothing to do but to inform your pigmy brain of snowfalls, street accidents, and love-affairs prematurely, so that you may flaunt about your pocket-handkerchief of a square pluming your dwarfs.h.i.+p that you are a prophet? Fie, young man, and again fie! Bow the knee, as I do, to the mysteries of the great universal scheme, instead of bothering them to turn informers and 'give away' the knowledge which is deliberately hidden from us. Show me a man that can understand the present and you'll have shown me a G.o.d. And yet you knock at the gates of the heavens through that telescope and clamour to be told the future! Fie upon you, young man, fie! Oh-h-h-h!"

Now the Prophet, as has been before observed, possessed a very sensitive nature. He was also very devoted to his grandmother, and had an extraordinary reverence for the world-famed attainments of Sir Tiglath b.u.t.t. Therefore, when he heard Mrs. Merillia's pleading, and the astronomer's weighty denunciation, he was deeply moved. Nevertheless, so strongly had recent events appealed to his curiosity, so ardently did he desire to search into the reality of his own peculiar powers, that it is very doubtful whether he might not have withstood both the behests of affection and of admiration had it not been that they took to themselves an ally, whose force is one of the moving spirits of the world. This ally was fear. Just as the Prophet was beginning to feel obstinate and to steel himself to resistance, he remembered the fierce and horrible threats of Malkiel the Second. If he should cease to concern himself with the stars, if he should cease to prophesy, not alone should he restore peace to his beloved grandmother, and pay the tribute of respect to Sir Tiglath, but he should do more. He should preserve his quick from being searched and his core from being probed. His marrow, too, would be rescued from the piercing it had been so devoutly promised. The dread, by which he was now companioned--of Malkiel, of that portentous and unseen lady who dwelt beside the secret waters of the Mouse, of those imagined offshoots of the prophetic tree, Corona and Capricornus--this would drop away. He would be free once more, light-hearted, a happy and mildly intellectual man of the town, emerged from the thrall of bogies, and from beneath the yoke which he already felt laid upon his shoulders by those august creatures who were the centre of the architectural circle.

All these things suddenly presented themselves to the Prophet's mind with extraordinary vividness and force. His resolve was taken in a moment, and, turning to his eager grandmother and to the still slightly inflated astronomer, he exclaimed without further hesitation,--

"Very well. I'll give it up. I promise you."

Mrs. Merillia clapped her mittens together almost like a girl.

"Thank you, Sir Tiglath," she cried. "I knew you would persuade the dear boy."

The astronomer beamed like the rising sun.

"Let the morning stars--freed from insult--sing together!" he roared.

The Prophet glanced towards Lady Enid. She was looking almost narrow and not at all pleased. She, and all her family, had a habit of suddenly appearing thinner than usual when they were put out. This habit had descended to them from a remote Highland ancestor, who had perished of starvation and been very vexed about it. The Prophet felt sure that she did not applaud his resolution, but he could not discuss the matter with her in public, and she now got up--looking almost like a skeleton--and said that she must go. Sir Tiglath immediately rolled up out of his chair and roared that he would accompany her.

"The old astronomer will protect the injudicious young female," he exclaimed, "lest she wander forth into accursed places."

"I'm only going to Hill Street," said Lady Enid, rather snappishly.

"Come to see me to-morrow at three," she whispered to the Prophet as she took his hand. "We must have a talk. Don't tell anybody!"

The Prophet nodded surrept.i.tiously. He felt that she was curious to her finger-tips as he gently pressed them.

When he and his grandmother were alone together he rang the drawing-room bell. Mr. Ferdinand appeared.

"Mr. Ferdinand," said the Prophet, "kindly call Gustavus to your aid and take away the telescope."

"Sir!" said Mr. Ferdinand in great astonishment.

"Take away the telescope."

"Certainly, sir. Where shall we place it, sir?"

"Anywhere," said the Prophet. "In the pantry--the square--in Piccadilly if you like--it's all the same to me."

And, unable to trust himself to say more, he hurried almost tumultuously from the room.

"Here's a go, Gustavus," remarked Mr. Ferdinand a moment later as he entered the servants' hall.

"Where, Mr. Ferdinand?" replied Gustavus, glancing up from a dish of tea and a couple of Worthing shrimps with which he was solacing an idle moment.

"Here, in this mansion, Gustavus. Me and you've got to take the telescope out of the drawing-room, and Master Hennessey says if we wish we can chuck it in Piccadilly."

The round eyes of Gustavus brightened.

"That is my wish, Mr. Ferdinand," he exclaimed. "Here's a lark!"

He sprang up. But Mr. Ferdinand checked his very agreeable vivacity.

"I am your head, Gustavus," he remarked, with severe ambiguity, "and master having also said that, if we wish, we can set the instrument in the butler's pantry, I have decided that so it shall moreover be. It will be very useful to us there."